


Go Down That Road

by creativefuckerzspring



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creativefuckerzspring/pseuds/creativefuckerzspring
Summary: “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it’s warmth.”- UnknownWhen the heart-shaped herb begins to affect them in a way T'Challa could have never predicted, will the country and everyone else end up as a collateral damage? How does anyone fight the Will of Bast as she chooses N'Jadaka as his mate?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic has been taken from the lyrics of 'Pray For Me' by the Weeknd ft Kendrick Lamar (Black Panther's OST)
> 
> The timeline's a wee bit changed - the Post Credit scenes are set only after Infinity Wars but the rest of the movie canon thing happened :D
> 
> Also, ABO/Incest thing happening so, if that's gonna be a problem, better click that back button right away. Oink, oink.
> 
>  
> 
> Not proofread but don't let that stop you from reading it!

T’Challa stares into the mirror as he traces one of the several scars on his torso- several of them by people he never saw before they left them there, each scar having its own tale to tell. But none quite as painful as the ones left behind by the people who mattered; the ones who betrayed him. T’Challa sighs and drops his hand and the black tunic drops like a veil, once again hiding the scars underneath it. Only T’Challa is aware of what he truly _bears_ .

 

“My King,” T’Challa turns around and puts his hands behind his back, posture erect. “I am afraid I come bearing no news you would like to hear.” She drops her head, every bit the picture of disappointment and sadness he hears in her voice. T’Challa has perfected the art of a poker face long back so it doesn’t mirror her expression.

“None, whatsoever?”

She shakes her head, it still lowered. “None.”

“You’re doing well, Healer Cebisa.”

“It is my duty.” She could have refused they both know, T’Challa having given her that choice but she hadn’t refused. Not even after knowing who she had to look after. “Perhaps,”  
she begins and T’Challa who is getting ready to leave pauses and looks at her, “you might... want to … see him?”

“Would that be of any help?” Cebisa starts to speak but T’Challa gestures her to stop. “It would be a futile endeavour.”

“He is taking a walk in the orchard near the pond.”

T’Challa smiles to reassure her. “If my presence would help me, I would.” He can tell she wants to ask him all the questions he knows anyone would ask- have asked him already but he has no answers to those questions either way. Cebisa parts the white cloth of the tent and they step outside. There are the children of the River tribe playing on the other side of the lake. Thanks to Bast and the heart-shaped herb, T’Challa has a very sharp vision and he can make out the distinct silhouette of N’Jadaka returning to his tent. The sound of the water rushing down almost drowns every other sound and the figure clad in white turns around. He is facing in the direction of T’Challa but his gaze is unfocused as if he doesn’t see T’Challa and then, the momentary stop in the glance is gone and N’Jadaka is walking further away to his tent.

 

 

“He is nothing like the White Wolf,” the Healer says and T’Challa releases the breath he didn’t know he had been holding in. “It is a shame that someone whose soul burned in fire not so long ago- who almost burned this nation down is now so… soulless.” For a second almost, he thought that N’Jadaka had been looking at him but then it will mean admission. Then, it would mean acknowledgement and N’Jadaka, T’Challa knows will never admit that. “We can heal broken bones, injured brains but how do you treat a broken _mind_? How do you _fix_ a broken heart, a broken _soul_?”

 

His shoulders slump imperceptibly and he says, dejected,

“Beings lighted with grief and hate end up burning their own world or themselves.” T’Challa now has what Shuri calls the Sad Look and T’Challa almost ends up laughing. “Keep me posted,” is all he says after that and turns on his heels and leaves. He is walking in the direction very opposite to the tent where the Prince of Wakanda, N’Jadaka now ‘lives’.

 

 

*

 

 

N’Jadaka who had collapsed in T’Challa’s arms after driving the sword deeper into his own chest had his pulse reading on the heart rate monitor. Despite having died minutes before to that. T’Challa remembers how they had all been shocked that the Killmonger had survived a sword through his heart but even more when T’Challa had ordered the best doctor be brought forward and treat him. He had spared his sister Shuri the pain who would have been equally capable to treat him. He couldn’t make her treat the very man who had threatened her family and people. He had let the experts take over the scene and had walked out of the place, his shoulders heavy. Burdened, guilt hiding in his chest. He had driven his cousin to take his own life. T’Challa had unclasped the necklace at the fringe of the forest surrounding the perimeter of the palace grounds and had run. He had run non-stop till the sun had come up. On the very first rays of the breaking dawn, the royalty fell to his knees, his heart hammering away in its cage, pain shredding through him. No tears shed, no cries heard as he kneeled on the ground where his people had shed blood of their own blood, where he had almost shed the blood of his own blood. The sacred ground of his people, burned, charred. T’Challa sat still, his eyes closed, feeling the rising sun on his face, his hands balled into fists and shaking by his side. To a spectator, it would have seemed as if he were praying to the Sun God, to Bast but it was only the Black Panther, Wakanda’s defeated king in all sense mourning his losses, trying to repress the pangs of grief shaking his heart, making his breath heavy and difficult.

 

In a few minutes, he had to leave, go back to his place, take back his throne and set things right. In a few minutes, he had to be with his people, giving them courage and lead them. But those few minutes that he had all to himself, even though they felt like he had been borrowing them, he had wanted to rage. He had wanted to _scream_ .

 

 

_What have you done, Baba? What have you done_

 

 

*

 

 

N’Jadaka, although, he had survived, he had barely made it. The Neurologist on the case had said the heart-shaped herb had probably healed him and had brought him back from the dead but it hadn’t been able to heal him _enough_. N’Jadaka had slipped into comatose. For over a year, he had remained in that state to every doctor’s frustration. There had never been a case like that before in Wakanda. Of course, people in the other countries across the globe have had such cases but never one in their own country. His subjects’ anger over keeping him alive, letting him live and ‘wasting’ resources on the Killmonger had subsided as time had passed and altogether, forgotten out of people’s minds when an imminent invasion by a space Titan came upon them. Rebuilding Wakanda after all that destruction had shifted priorities and attention. N’Jadaka had woken up during what Shuri labelled Wakanda Resurrection. N’Jadaka had woken up to a Wakanda broken and destroyed, the very image he had wanted and yet, the will of Bast is such that the half-Wakandan had no recollection of his previous memories, of his ambitions. The Healers who had now taken over his treatment alluded it to trauma and its suppression. Thus, N’Jadaka and T’Challa had crossed paths several times and yet N’Jadaka had passed by him as if he were a stranger. When the Healer had noticed that, she had immediately rushed to them, explaining to him how the man standing opposite to them was their king and they had to bow to him. To his surprise, N’Jadaka had introduced himself as N’Jadaka. No Erik, no Killmonger, his accent a very curious mix. He had smiled at T’Challa, it not quite reaching his eyes but he had still smiled at him, one with no malice. T’Challa had been shocked is an understatement but that he had done a good deed by giving the Killmonger another chance had been reinforced. 

 

N’Jadaka, he later had heard from the children and the Healers alike had been oblivious to what had transpired. He had laughed and smiled at the children. He had teased the young women and had flirted with them and had offered several times to help them in any way that he could with the reconstruction going all around. T’Challa had been flying around the globe, involved in all the summits, the peace talks, UN council and in decision making for the world. By the time T’Challa could spare some time to check on him and see how his cousin was doing, another year had passed. And, by the time, he had come back to see him, N’Jadaka had regained his memories, they said.

 

To his shock and dismay, N’Jadaka instead of going back to his fiery spirit had become a broken shell of a man. He had become a shadow of his previous self, his eyes dull and empty. T’Challa had met with silence and … nothing. His cousin never uttered a word to him and ignored his presence. As if T’Challa hadn’t mattered to him. As if he hadn’t tried to kill the king out of hatred. Each time T’Challa would visit him, each time there would only be silence between them. It had made the young aristocrat anxious. Each time a blow to his belief and chipped away from his conviction that he had done well by letting N’Jadaka. The latter wouldn’t protest to his visit. There had been never an objection. As if T’Challa’s presence was nothing. Guilt and regret hit him each time they now crossed paths, each time he saw the dull and hollow eyes staring back at him. None of that hatred, pain directed at him.

 

Another several months had passed but the situation had remained quite the same. However, since N’Jadaka didn’t turn him away, he had walked down that bank of the lake several evenings, sometimes with the right excuses and sometimes not. Sometimes, he’d just visit the Head Healer Cebisa and return to his palace from the doorstep. He had only wanted his cousin to have another shot at life, a few years to know that there is more life, more to Wakanda than hate. To right his Baba’s wrong. One such evening when righteousness had been bubbling too much in him after having returned from a very successful press meeting, he had headed straight to the camp. N’Jadaka had not been in his tent. T’Challa traced his scent by the lake and he had immediately marched till there. N’Jadaka had been sitting in his white robes, long, unruly hair hanging, his feet dipped in water. He hadn’t looked very different from Sergeant Barnes and the Captain when they had been given asylum in Wakanda. T’Challa had asked politely,

 

“May I join you?”

 

Nothing but silence for him.

 

T’Challa had sat several feet away from him. The light breeze made sure that he could still inhale his cousin’s scent and it hadn’t felt that much of a distance.

 

“I come with news, N’Jadaka.” No nod, no glance. T’Challa continued, unperturbed, “Wakanda is in the news today. All over the globe. We are no longer,” he faltered for a bit as N’Jadaka’s right foot shifted in the water, leaving ripples on the water surface and T’Challa had smirked. He knew, for once, he had N’Jadaka’s attention. “I-” His smugness hadn’t lasted because the Could Have Been King had stood up and had left him. T’Challa had been gobsmacked because no one had ever done that to him before and this, of all things, had been his cousin’s response to him. He had been left aghast in a manner of speaking but it had only proven to him that he was finally getting through to his cousin at some level whichever they be may because he was beginning to get tired of being ignored. His patience had been wearing through. 

 

T’Challa being T’Challa had never been one to give up.

 

 

*

 

 

Several weeks pass before he decides to go down to the lake site again and pay his cousin another visit.

 

This time it seems N’Jadaka is waiting for him instead, his eyes not the usual kind of glossy and far away but more of squint and dead but still there’s not that gaze that left T’Challa in anguish. His eyes and facial expressions give away that he has a lot on his mind but to T’Challa’s frustration, N’Jadaka only turns away and disappears through the crowd.

 

Three days later, the King visits the river tribe children again and rumours start flying that he has set his eyes on someone from down there. T’Challa pays heed to no such rumour and continues on his path. He grinds his teeth in irritation as he swarmed by the older members of the tribe who are indulging in nothing but silly hearsay (which must have been started by them in the first place) and watches as N’Jadaka sits on a bench behind his tent, oblivious to all the children, who keep poking him and then would run away. When T’Challa finally approaches them, the children scream and shout as they surround him, some being bold and straight away asking to be picked up. He wonders if his cousin will leave this time too and he doesn’t have too much time on his hand, he has a council with all the tribe leaders to attend. Nevertheless, he indulges some of the kids in their request and picks two-three of them and swirl and twirl them around, all of them letting out high-pitched squeals and laughter. It only brings about a marginal fraction of joy onto T’Challa’s face before he notices his cousin shifting on his spot and he immediately, puts the children down and asks them to go and play elsewhere. They are more than ready to ‘obey’ their King and run away leaving their peals of laughter behind.

 

“Cousin N’Jadaka.”

 

T’Challa sits only a few feet away from the half-Wakandan who is sitting with his hands gripping the edge of the bench and very faint wisps of anger visible through his eyes. T’Challa is taken aback as he isn’t used to these pair of eyes being directed at him. He doesn’t have to wonder for too long the cause.

 

“Why?” His voice sounds scratchy and rough as if they haven’t been used in a long time. T’Challa looks at him, confused. He has done so many things, which one is he talking about? Saving his life? Revealing the truth about Wakanda to the world? Or, why he visits him?

 

“You will have to be a little more specific on that.”

 

“They told me. You told everyone about the Vibranium.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“Why?”

 

T’Challa cocked his head to a side and said, “Isn’t it an irony that the nation which championed for the Accords Act would hide such a secret within herself?”

“It’s not irony. It’s lying.” He says coldly. 

“And, hence, the declaration.”

“Why now after all these years?” T’Challa cannot decipher the look on the other man’s face. So he says simply,

“Because I care.” He says it with the utmost sincerity but it’s only met with disdain. N’Jadaka scoffs and T’Challa flinches when he says,

“Since when?”

 

There is no anger, there is no accusation. These are the words of a man who is stating based on his beliefs which are for _him_ facts. He is truly no longer the man T’Challa had met. He is neither Killmonger nor the man T’Challa had hoped he would come to be. Sitting beside him is someone he doesn’t recognise – not even his foe. Like his _Baba_ , he too had taken something away from his cousin. This time he had taken away his choice of death and had, essentially, put him in the cage that Erik Stevens despised; a cage made and locked by his own kin. Anguish, a sense of failure grips T’Challa who stands up quickly and says with a heavy heart,

 

 

“I hope, N’Jadaka, you come to find in this place people you can call your own, your tribe.” And with those parting words, T’Challa leaves the place, his head held low.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, Killmonger's Dream theme helps a lot while writing ^^

When he opens his eyes, there’s light, too much light- one that blinds him. It hurts. There’s a movement and a hand appears in his vision. His hand. He tries to shift but he can’t. It is as if he is stuck to something. It is just his hand, light and whiteness all around. Then, there is noise… people… people are… speaking and his hand falls back. It touches something cold and he can barely make out the figure approaching him. Probably and his vision goes back.

 

The second time he opens his eyes are... are after a dream. Someone was holding him, shouting- not at him but others, barking orders and that someone holding him had been gentle. Afraid. He wakes up with only one word that is going around in his mind, the one which the gentle person had used.

“N’Jadaka.”

What does it mean?

 

When he wakes up after that dream, he is alone. He is in some kind of tent and he can hear people talking outside. He tries to speak but it only hurts his throat and he ends up coughing. He puts a hand on his chest and tries to sit up. There’s no further pain of any kind to his relief and tries to climb off the... he looks down. It is a cot. He places one foot on the cold floor after the other and tries to stand up. He manages decently but as he tries to take a step forward, his foot barely shifts as if the bone joints suddenly locked down and he goes down crashing. He hits his head on the floor and vision goes out for a second as he cries out in pain. Someone comes rushing in. He can hear the padding feet and there’s a shocked face in front of him. She has her eyes wide and fearful.  
“Hey, auntie.”  
He, perhaps, smiles and then there’s a sharp, stinging pain at the back of his head and the world fades out again.

 

*

 

The next time he wakes up, he barely has any recollection of that. In fact, he has no memories prior to that. He is told he is ‘N’Jadaka’, the son of a former prince of Wakanda. Wakanda is the country where he is. He accepts what he is told and continues to live in that tent. Healer Cebisa tells him he needs to stay with them for longer for recovery. She tells him how they were attacked by a Mad Titan from outer space. He doesn’t scoff like he wants to because there is destruction and carnage all around to see. She even tells him that he is blessed by Her Almighty, Bast if he survived all by himself in his condition during the War. N’Jadaka doesn’t question her why he had been left alone in such a situation. After all, she never asks him if he would like to visit his family. She never tells where they are. No one ever comes to visit him. Maybe he lost his family in the War and she is sparing him the pain.

However, more than that is her fear that he reads on her when she thinks he isn’t looking. He remembers when he first ‘woke up’ she had stood at the far end of the tent, looking scared and unsure. Every time she flinched when he would take a step closer to her. Her Assistant Healer would be no different. Although Healer Cebisa no longer fears him for whatever that she did, others still do. He hears the whispers of War and him whenever he passes by during his walk practice. The distrust and concealed anger in people’s eyes. One time, someone had screamed and gone out running. Healer Cebisa jokes that it is his scars that terrifies people. The villagers are easily spooked since the War, she says but he knows better. In the middle of the night, when he stands in front of a mirror staring at his reflection, he sees all these scars, lacerations and bumps on his skin there has been given no explanation for. His skin is raised in places and smooth in others and as time passes and more of his skin ‘heals’ by itself, N’Jadaka is left to believe that he had more scars on him than the ones he had woken up to. And even though they may be fading now it doesn’t change that they had been there. His only identities are ‘N’Jadaka’ or, as the children call him The Man With Scars. He doesn’t take any offence to that because these children are the only ones who accept him wholeheartedly and makes sure to spend some time playing with them.

And, then, there is the King. King T’Challa.

He had seen the King several times around the place but he hadn’t known that that was their King. Maybe that is why he had been surprised they had passed by each other and he hadn’t acknowledged the other. His Healer finally one day introduces who he is and N’Jadaka had smiles. If T’Challa is the king then that means they are somehow relatives. Right? His first sign of family. They politely converse about his health and how he is faring but never once mentions about their family. He never once says anything about it and it finally sinks in that maybe, his family doesn’t want him. T’Challa seems kind, with his soft voice, soft smile and sadness in his eyes when he turns that gaze on N’Jadaka. Many times, his gaze only has compelled N’Jadaka to ask what hurts him. Is it the state of his country? Is it N’Jadaka? Is it pity for the man who has no memories and even scars which could have told him his history now disappearing? Who can be more pathetic than him? T’Challa only sits by him at the shore of the lake, as the children of a nearby tribe play in the soil and they watch the ripples in the water surface, the birds flying away. This lake and its banks are one of the few places in the country that had been left unharmed. So, the healing and the hurting spent their time down here in the camps. 

Then the King stops coming.

 

He doesn’t ask why. The King has many duties none of which include visiting a N’Jadaka.

 

N’Jadaka also discovers he isn’t capable of hate. He has essentially been abandoned by his people, by his family and he doesn’t even know why. The nice company of the sweet king is gone. He is left alone. He feels _abandoned_ . At least, there had been someone before to engage him. Someone he’d look forward to but now no one.

Then, the headaches start. Severe they are. They shoot like electrocution through his spine and N’Jadaka wonders how he knows what that feels like. Then, there are these faces, these places, these pains, these screams that he doesn’t remember but he knows.

And, hate.

There is so much blinding hate that he often wakes up in the middle of the night, sweating, screaming, his mattresses and bedsheets torn to pieces. He claws at himself, at the scabs, at the scars, trying to stifle the agony that rakes through him. His clothes are usually soaking in sweat by this time, his muscles stiff and sore from phantom wounds. He still doesn’t know why, where these all come from and no one in the camp deigns to tell him.

 

It is a fine spring day, the birds chirping and the children playing next to him when one of their parents comes rushing and accuses him of ill-will, of corrupting their child who is then taken away. ‘Killmonger’ she called him.

It doesn’t take long before N’Jadaka wakes up one day as Erik Stevens, an Ex-CIA agent, a Special Op, a War Dog, someone with thirst for blood, for power. A killing machine. Someone who with his want to help his own kind had almost razed down his own people.

And, the King. T’Challa. 

Erik hates him is what he’d like to think but he is not. There are so many emotions running through his veins and he knows fear is one of them. Abandoned in childhood and even abandoned now. T’Challa had not only robbed him of his choice but had also put him in a gilded cage. He doesn’t understand why they haven’t killed him already.

Maybe kindness and pity is what they want to suffocate him with.

The King’s younger sibling comes down to the lake one day and offers him two choices. Either, he ran from the country and no one would look for him or, he could stay a part of Wakanda, learn about it and be a part of the system. She hisses the words out as if she doesn’t want to give him these options. He wonders how much her brother put her to this. T’Challa, after all, is a foolish man. He has heard enough tales of his kindness and big-heartedness to know. He himself is a standing example. Erik only turns his back on her and says,

“Tell me when you mean them.”

Sometimes, he thinks he sees the Queen walking on the other side of the lake. He isn’t too sure and sometimes, T’Challa himself. Maybe he imagines it because, in this hateful, pitiful existence, he had come to expect his cousin’s company.

Irony, eh.

Erik ignores the world, ignores everyone and sits in the orchard most of the time. When it gets dark, he goes for a run but most of the times, he halts midway as ghosts of his memories come to the forefront of his mind and he topples over. He lays on the wet ground, crying for his mother, for his father, his childhood and messed up adulthood. Now that the hate has taken a backseat (though it never goes away) there are only tears and hurt it leaves for him.

What had he done to deserve this?

Then, flashes of him killing scores and scores of people, shooting down random children, the girl back from London only to get Ulysses come to his mind and he shakes. He had killed hundreds of innocents just on command. He had killed several innocents here in Wakanda. He had killed Zuri, his Uncle James. He had almost killed T’Challa. He doubles over as shame and sorrow grip him and he cries away into the silent night.

Since then, Erik doesn’t run into the forest. He sits dull, listlessly, and watches his surrounding without taking anything in. He doesn’t remember what he is doing and had done. His days pass and they pass. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

When the pain gets too much, he takes the little vial his Assistant Healer sneaks in for him into his tent and chugs the content down. Those nights are dreamless nights and headache-less but the next mornings are foggy, hazy and forgotten. It doesn’t bother him though. Now only if he could forget himself too.

 

Then finally, one day, T’Challa visits him, leaving a lot of space between them and wonders if the King knows that he remembers. The former says,

“Wakanda is in the news today. All over the globe. We are no longer,” he pauses and then starts again, “I-”

Erik gets up and leaves. He doesn’t know why he dreads whatever the other is going to say but he fears hearing it. He hates it and walks away.

Erik hears in the whispers again first what T’Challa had done, how their King had told the world about them, their natural resources and some called him crazy. The Healers told him then what T’Challa had announced. That night, he couldn’t sleep. Not even after drinking two vials of it. With nothing to help him sleep through it, memories and his memories alone keep him awake. When T’Challa visits him next he can’t help but ask,

“Why?”

He says he cares for them. He can look at him no longer. T’Challa has taken away his ability to hate him too. This King is stripping away from him even the last pieces of him that kept him sane.

“I hope, N’Jadaka, you come to find in this place people you can call your own, your tribe,” T’Challa says and leaves. There’s a pang in his chest. There’s a regret Erik feels for making the other man this way. He can feel the sadness in the other as the latter gets up. The air is filled with sadness, a scent that is perhaps T’Challa’s as he walks past him and Erik wonders how he had let T’Challa close enough to know what his scent is like. Erik frowns and looks over his shoulder at the retreating back.

 

 

***

 

T’Challa is making rounds around the Institute of Art and Culture where he has plans for bringing Foreign Exchange students for a programme and is walking down the corner. He stops when the Professor excuses himself to get the essential folder. He gestures him where he would be waiting for him and continues down the walkway. He can hear the voice of another teacher outside in the garden and he peers down the parapet. There is a group of students circling the instructor and listening to whatever he is saying about their history and significance of the flower in their religion when he notices Erik hanging behind the group, looking disinterested and uncomfortable. T’Challa’s eyes widen in surprise and it is just then his cousin looks up and T’Challa fumbles and almost trips over his own leg.

“Your Highness,”

He hears Aneka say with confusion. It isn’t every day that the Dora Milaje gets to see their King be clumsy. T’Challa clears his throat and turns to her asks,  
“Since when is he here?”

“A few weeks.” She adds as an afterthought, “He accepted Princess Shuri’s offer.”

“That was a year back.” He is confused.

“Yes, but, he accepted it now.” She replies, almost frowning herself. T’Challa looks out again. Erik is now in the middle of the crowd, listening just like any other student.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was it? What did you think?

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will alternate between both their POVs. Let me know what you thought of it? This is my first Marvel fic :')
> 
> (other tags to be added with subsequent chapters)


End file.
